Student – Dan Hall HAL23085580
Supervisor – Jason Ellis
Project Proposal
Production Project Files
Progress and Management Records
Dan Hall – Producer, Engineer, Guitarist
Project start
Across my time at Leeds Conservatoire, I have been fortunate enough to work with a large array of talented artists and bands, which gave me a sense of freedom when it came to thinking about my final project theme and who/what I wanted to record for it.
During August 2025, I was contacted by an Actor-Musician student named Daisy Dalby, and she asked if I would be willing to record, produce, and mix the upcoming EP that she wants to release. So my role for both Daisy and Zack’s recordings were the recording and mix engineer so the traacks you’ll here are mixes not masters. This worked out well because, as an actor-musician student, she wouldn’t need to use the recordings as a part of any of her assignments, meaning I had free rein to use however much of her EP that I wanted on my final project. Once getting to the end of this project, I realised I still needed more to fill the total time amount for the project. So, I reached out to an artist called Zack Brautigam, a first-year music student at the University of Leeds. This would also work in my favour, as he is at another institution, meaning that the grading and marking aren’t checked between to see if students have submitted work they collaborated on together. So once again, I was able to use all of it as a part of my final portfolio.
Project Gantt Chart
Daisy reaching out to me
Daisy Dalby:
Songs:
- Be My Baby?
- Cremation
- Thinner
- Flowers
Daisy Dalby Room Demos
Cremation
Flower
Be My Baby? – Now released on Spotify
Thinner
Zack Brautigam:
Songs:
- Stay Here
- The Blue
Me reaching out to Zack + Demos
Stay Here
The Blue
Daisy Dalby – Recording + Gantt Chart:
The process of recording with Daisy usually started with us creating a small scratch take in our first sessions for each song, and from there getting her band involved to record their respective parts on each song. We would try to get as much of a whole song done in each session, and we did together to maximise our efficiency in the studio. To keep as consistent a sound as possible, I tried to minimise recording in different studios for each instrument so that each song would have a consistent sound throughout. This would’ve been most important for drums, but unfortunately, each drum track across the songs was done in different studios. But for other aspects, such as vocals and guitar, they were usually done in the same studio with the same mic setup and preamps, to make my job when it came to mixing the EP much easier (as I could create a vocal template).
Daisy Recording Photos
Flowers recording:
The rest of the songs across the whole portfolio were done as overdubs, but ‘Flowers’ by Daisy was done live in studio 109 with just her and Leo (acoustic guitarist and backing singer) playing without a click track or monitoring. We initially planned to record both Leo and Daisy together, but with a click track, because Daisy had ideas to add cellos in after recording their bit. This idea then got scrapped after a few takes with just Daisy and Leo, and because of that, they ditched the idea of using headphones as well and just went off what they could hear in the room from each other. She was inspired to record a ‘demo’ style song with the main inspiration being ‘Method Acting (Demo) by Lizzie McAlpine. It has a distinctive, roomy but polished sound to it. It sounds like a demo, but it could still be played on the radio or on an album and still hold its own against other songs.
We used 3 mics across the whole song: a Shure SM7B on the vocals, a Warm WA-87 on the acoustic guitar and an Xaudia Beeb ribbon mic on the rooms. The blend of these three mics together led to a very bare bones and minimal sound, but that is what we wanted to get out of that in the first place. I chose to use the SM7B on this recording as opposed to the WA-87 that I had been using on the rest of Daisy’s vocals because the SM7B, when raw, has a much darker and flatter sound than the WA-87, leading to a more ‘demo’ style recording from that. Also, it is a common mic you see in bedroom recordings, so again, it matches the vibe of the recording that we were going for in the first place.
Zack Brautigam – Recording:
The two songs I did with Zack were recorded over two sessions: one focused entirely on the instrumentals, and the second on vocals and any instrument overdubs Zack wanted to do or redo. Doing both full instrumentals in one session made it very easy to make the mixes sound cohesive and consistent with each other, since it was the same room, player, mics, instrument setup, etc. As I mentioned before, Zack is a multi-instrumentalist, so he played all the instruments on all the tracks for both songs. This made the structure of the day very easy to do as we set up and everything at the start of the day, and then left it up the whole time so that he could hop on anything as he pleased throughout the recording. It also meant I didn’t have to coordinate with any session musicians at all, which meant communication and time management were very good for this recording. I also used the Shure SM7B on vocals for this recording.
Zack recording photos
Daisy Dalby – Mixing:
When it came to mixing Daisy’s EP, I spent a long time getting the sound right for the first song we did (Be My Baby?) and from there created channel strip templates that I could use across projects to speed up the mixing process for her songs. Doing this made mixing it feel less monotonous, especially as I reached the latter half of the EP. For influences, we both gave ideas on sounds that we wanted, which included artists such as Olivia Rodrigo, Lizzie McAlpine, and Lorde. We wanted to create this sound that is very much a minimalist bedroom-inspired sound, but then also stands out on the radio and amongst other songs that are being released daily.
Be My Baby? – Mix notes
When mixing ‘Flowers’, I used a room emulator plugin by Universal Audio, which replicates the sound of Ocean Studios in Canada. I used this to give myself more control over the room sound, and so I could tailor it to how Daisy and I wanted it to sound. This mix utilised lots of very dark reverbs and saturation to make it grittier and sound more like a demo, but not to the point where it loses all of its fidelity and original quality.
Daisy Mix Influences
Zack Brautigam – Mixing:
Zack’s music is very bedroom-inspired, and although it was recorded in a studio, I still wanted to try to recreate that bedroom sound. A simpler yet more complex mixing and production style, due to which I had to try to make instruments recorded in a studio sound worse and make them more bedroom quality. One thing I used a lot across this mix for space and depth was slapback delay. Slapback is a great creative and practical tool to use in mixing, as it gives instruments a bit more life and bounce, whilst also giving them depth in the overall mix. Most slapback delays produce a bit of harmonic saturation as well, so it warmed up and made each instrument I put it on sound fuller compared to before. This was inspired by watching a video from the ‘Tape Notes’ podcast with Jack Antonoff that talked about using slapback delay on your mix to create similar effects.
Zack – Stay Here
Jack Antonoff Production Video
The Blue – Mixing:
The second of Zack’s songs is called ‘The Blue’, and it has a very heavy usage of strings as a textural, harmonic, and melodic element, but we ended up using VST strings for this (string sounds imported from Zack’s score on MuseScore 4). So, in the mix, I had to try to make these strings sound as natural and together as I possibly could. As I said, they’re mostly there as texture and harmonic layering, which makes it easier to make sound natural as it isn’t at the forefront of the mix. I achieved this through careful EQ moves and reverb that I will show in the video below.
Zack – The Blue
Mixing Digital Strings – Tutorial
Zack Mix Influences
Conclusion:
When looking back over the past 9 months of this project, I feel proud of what I have managed to achieve. However, I do believe I have had some shortcomings along the way. I believe my communication could’ve been better. Songs could’ve been recorded much faster overall; however, some took months to finish recording. The outcome, though, has proved positive as both artists are happy with what I have managed to produce and mix for them. When doing future large-scale projects, I think I need to be more aware of my time management and communication and not rely on other people to communicate with session players for each track.
Bibliography:
Notes, Tape. “Jack Antonoff’s Top 5 Production Tricks.” Www.youtube.com, 4 Apr. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIpkr638me0. Accessed 18 Apr. 2024.
URM Academy. “Mixing CHELSEA GRIN Synths vs Jason Richardson Guitar Solo.” YouTube, 19 Nov. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6g_IHfwm9c. Accessed 6 May 2026.
